China unveils why its defense budget increases by 7%

On Monday, Chinese official Xinhua news agency announced that the country’s defense budget would be increased by 7% this year, up to 1.044 trillion yuan ($151.43 billion), Reuters reports.

This data was provided by Xinhua on its microblog and with the reference to its anonymous source in China’s Finance Ministry.

These funds will be allocated mostly to “support the deepening of national defense and military reforms”.

The intrigue, which prompted speculations about transparency, was that the exact figures of defense expenditures of the Chinese budget had not been initially included in an annual report presented over the course of the parliament’s meeting held on Sunday.

As a rule, Chinese government relishes the opportunity to stress that its military is transparent.